The Coal Tattoo

by Silas House

  The sheriff didn’t speak until Anneth had finished and silence lay over the street once again. Easter turned to face him and couldn’t help smiling, but he tried to look past this when he shifted in his seat and shook his head.

  “Easter, I watched you grow up,” he said. “I thought the world of your grannies, both of them. And I have to say that you’re one of the finest people I know. But you acted like somebody wild yesterday. I didn’t have no choice but to put you in jail, the way you hit my officers and went on.”

  “They shouldn’t have put their hands on Anneth. You know I’d kill anybody over her. She’s all I have in this world, besides El.”

  “Well, there was no use in acting that way.”

  “She’s pregnant, Lee.”

  “And that’s exactly why she shouldn’t have been out there laying in front of bulldozers and acting a fool like that.”

  Easter folded her hands in her lap. “You have to help us,” she said.

  “All I can do is let you out of here so you can go to the courthouse and ask that the broad form be looked over. If your uncle sold that land and it wasn’t his to sell, you’ll be all right.”

  Easter nodded. “That’s what I should’ve done before all this.”

  “It wouldn’t have mattered. If you hadn’t done all this, the judge wouldn’t even look at the deed.” The sheriff got up and pushed the chair back against the wall. “I’ll tell you something. That picture of them carrying Anneth away—big pregnant belly and all—got picked up by the wire service and is on the front page of every newspaper on the East Coast. I don’t believe they’ll ever bother that piece of land again.”

  “I’ll still go to court and get the deed fixed proper,” Easter said.

  Lee put his hands into his pockets and jangled the coins that lay within. He let out a long sigh. “I think one night in jail was enough for that slap you gave to my deputy, but you sure hurt that man’s pride,” he said. “It’d be good of you to apologize to him.”

  “I think I’m a big-enough person to tell somebody I’m sorry,” she said.

  He unlatched the key chain attached to his belt loop and sorted through his keys. He unlocked her cell and held her by the crook of her arm as he walked her down the hallway and back to sunlight.

  Thirty-two

  Promises Kept

  WHEN ANNETH RECEIVED the letter, she knew—just by holding the paper within her hands, just by smelling his distant scent on the stationery—that he was no more of this world. But there were other reasons to suspect his death, as well. The letter had been written only a month after his leaving her on the train, but it had taken nearly eight months to get to her. There was no obvious reason why. The envelope bore an army and air force postal mark over Bradley’s quickly written “Free” where a stamp normally went. The postmark date was only two weeks ago. She suspected that he had written the letter, addressed the envelope, and shoved it in his bags, meaning to mail it later. Perhaps after his death someone had fished it from his belongings and slipped it into the mail. The words in the letter proved that if he truly was alive he would have written more to her.

  28 September 1968

  Dear Anneth,

  How is this cruel cruel world treating you? Ha. Fine I hope. As for myself I’m okay I guess but I’m sure homesick. Everything is really different when you are all by yourself on the other side of the world. All I do is think of home. My folks and brother and sister and you. You more than anything. Looking back it seems kind of crazy, what we did. Falling in love after knowing each other two days only. But I do love you, Anneth, and being so far away only makes me more certain of that. I count the days until I am back to you. I am saving about two or three hundred dollars a month and that will really add up after a year. Plus the GI Bill will help me out and send me to school. We will be able to get married in high style. I guess that’s springing one on you, huh? We never really talked about that but it seemed to be right on the tips of our tongues. When I said I’d be back for you that’s what I meant and you knew it too I am sure.

  Being over here makes you think about things like that all the time. That’s all that can keep me going, just planning on the future. I have to believe in that to get me through. I’ve just been here two weeks and already I have seen hell in the flesh. It is too much to talk about and I’m not allowed to talk about it in letters anyway. I can’t even tell you where I am. They say it is a “secure location” but I don’t know how they come up with that because it sure doesn’t feel too secure when the fighting hasn’t stopped here in two days. I never understood the war really until I got over here and I can’t explain it but now that I am here I’m going to fight for my country. And just fight to get back to you. I will write to you every day and now that you have my address you can write to me, too. Please send me a picture of you too since I left without getting one and have regretted that every day. I want to show you off to the boys.

  I’ve bored you long enough. Just know that I think of you every minute and that I love you. We’ll be together soon.

  Love always,

  Bradley

  And that was all.

  She turned the paper over, as if there might be more. She tore the airmail envelope open and looked inside, hoping to find some secret message, but there was nothing. The address was strange, nothing like her own post office box number, but instead was a mess of numbers and letters mixed together with “APO–San Francisco” as its final line. She knew that she could use this address to find out if he was really dead. She could call the army and have this address traced to find out about him, but she knew that she would never do that. Though she knew he was dead, if someone actually told her this from the other end of the line, then there would never be a glimmer of hope left. There would be nothing. She folded the letter back up.

  She put the letter inside her souvenir box and then slid the box back under her bed. She decided that she might as well marry Glenn Couch and leave it at that. Glenn would be good to her. He had a well-paying job and would take her anywhere she wanted to go. After the baby was born he could whisk her away to the beach or somewhere so she could forget that she had given away her child. He would take her to bars and honky-tonks. There was something dangerous about Glenn, she knew. He loved her, that much was true, but he loved her in a different way than Matthew had. Matthew had loved her without asking for anything in return, but it would be different with Glenn. He would want her to worship him as much as he worshipped her. And that was never going to happen.

  But still, she had spent her whole life looking for someone to love her and she knew that he did; she might as well snatch up any love she could get. She thought she could live a lie for the rest of her life. Suffering like that would help to numb her, too. She could walk around like a whisper and no one would ever know the difference. People walked around dead all the time, going through the motions of life without really being there at all.

  Hadn’t her own mother done this? But unlike Birdie, she would bear her grief, she would go through life with this suffering resting on her neck like an oxen yoke.

  She lay back on her bed and ran her hand over her stomach, trying not to love the child inside. She could fool herself with all the reasons she thought up to marry Glenn: his money, his love for her, his patience with her. But she knew the real reason she would marry Glenn: to betray Bradley. If she waited on Bradley, he might never come back. He really would be dead over there. But if she married Glenn, perhaps Bradley would show up one day. She knew there were no happy endings and this was the only hope of his surviving. This could be her sacrifice for him: marry Glenn and never, ever be happy, just so Bradley could live. Because it would be too easy if she just waited. It only happened in the movies that women waited and then the returning soldier just appeared out of nowhere, a survivor, a changed man in every way, back for his sweetheart.

  If she betrayed Bradley, then Bradley might live. And more important, this betrayal would harden her heart. A heart of stone didn�
��t feel anything at all.

  EASTER LAY ATOP EL on the couch, comfortable in the steady rise and fall of his chest. It was already hot, although it was only May, but Easter had set the box fan up in front of the screen door and a cooling breeze washed over them as the blue shadows of evening began to fall across the living room. They were watching the evening news. Nixon declared that he was going to start pulling troops out of Asia, but then the scene switched straight to pictures from Vietnam. It didn’t look as if there was hope for it to slow down anytime soon. She saw soldiers firing into the distance, the launch of a missile, helicopters cutting into the sky. It was all a chaos of running men and black smoke rising into the air. Children crying and bloody bodies lying on the ground. She found herself looking for Bradley, then realized that she didn’t even know what he looked like. Still, he was very real to her. She prayed for him every night as he fought over there. He was the father of her nephew, the nephew she would raise and call her own. It took only one second to think something that she would always feel guilty about. She would never forget this moment, this thought running through her mind: if Bradley came back, they wouldn’t get the baby. As soon as the thought came, it went, and then she was so ashamed at herself for thinking this way that she started crying.

  Easter watched the images of war through her tears, but it was all too much—her own selfishness, the war, everything—and she had to look away, turning her face toward the couch and closing her eyes against what was always present, just barely out of reach.

  El spread his hand out across her back but didn’t say anything. She knew he was watching, too.

  Without missing a beat the news anchor left the war behind to talk about Apollo 11. Easter could hear the smile in his voice, the tap of his stacked papers against his desk. As he talked she imagined pictures of astronauts working and smiling, a shot of Apollo 10, which had just been sent up.

  “This world’s gone crazy,” Easter said. “Boys dying left and right and people all excited about men trying to walk on the moon. It’s not right.”

  “We need something good to happen right now,” El said in his even way. “It’d be something if they did end up walking on the moon.”

  “It’s a scary time, though. Everything that’s been happening.”

  “You’ll be safe here with me,” El said.

  She knew this was true, but it didn’t make her feel any better. Often she felt as if she were going through life grieving over something that hadn’t even happened yet.

  ANNETH TURNED THE volume on the television all the way down and ran her finger along the spines of her record albums, trying to find the one to match her mood. She scanned past everything until she arrived at Dusty in Memphis. She set the needle onto the first groove, and the strings of “Just a Little Lovin’” came on. She danced around barefooted in her living room, closing her eyes and swaying as the music built and fell away again. She realized that she hadn’t danced in months and months. At first her legs seemed too heavy to lift, weighed down by sadness or frustration or something else she couldn’t put a name to. But before long she felt light as a paper doll.

  As soon as she had found out she was pregnant, she had sworn to herself that she wouldn’t drink, but right now she needed a beer in the worst sort of way. She was glad she didn’t have any in her refrigerator or she would have drunk one. Maybe she could be drunk on this music instead. It was the closest she was going to come tonight, anyway.

  She twirled around, listening to Dusty Springfield and dancing in place as she watched the silent images on the television screen: Those long green helicopters and the shiny leaves of the jungle blowing in the sharp wind. Soldiers sitting in the open doorways of the helicopters, their legs hanging right out the side as they moved higher and higher into the sky, up above the fires and the smoke and the bullets.

  She couldn’t take it anymore; she turned the television off. She sat down on the couch and pulled the phone up into her lap. She would never stop loving Bradley, but she had to go forward with her life. If she sat in this apartment and waited on him, she’d go mad. She picked up the receiver and dialed Glenn’s number.

  Thirty-three

  You’ll Never Leave Harlan Alive

  SHE SAID SHE DIDN’T want to wait until the baby was born. She wanted to go right now. True, her belly showed all of her nearly nine months of pregnancy, but the justice of the peace in Harlan had probably married plenty of girls in her condition.

  “I don’t care what anybody thinks,” Anneth told Glenn.

  “I don’t, either, as long as I can have you,” Glenn said. “I’ll be right there.”

  “No, in the morning. It’s too late right now,” she said, feeling as though they were planning a trip to the grocery store instead of to get married. “Just come early.”

  She went to bed and slept like a dead woman, never moving throughout the night. In the morning she arose and dressed as if in a daze, slow and sluggish as she pulled on her dress suit and fixed her hair. When she opened the door, Glenn picked her up in his arms and she let him hold her a minute as she looked over his shoulder out the open door at nothing.

  All the way to Harlan, Anneth leaned against the car window and watched the world pass by. There was a mist of rain, just enough to keep them from rolling down their windows, and she looked through the tiny beads of water on the glass to see the houses sitting on stilts beside the road, the gardens that were just beginning to grow full and crowded with bean vines and the bluish green leaves of potato plants. They drove over Buffalo Mountain, past the dripping cliffs and the places where she could look down and see the whole valley spread out below them. They passed several churches and little stores that sat close to the road and a couple of girls who were twirling around in their front yard, their faces up to catch the light rain. Glenn had come up behind a loaded coal truck and had to slow down while the truck tried to make its way up the slope, and she got a good look at the girls. They had left their shoes on the porch and were holding hands, dancing round and round barefooted on the wet grass, their legs long and brown—sisters who loved each other and would spend their whole lives loving each other.

  Anneth felt cleaned out. She felt as if a great big hand had reached inside her and simply scooped out everything: her heart, her lungs, her soul. She leaned against the window and tried not to cry. Glenn was talking to her, asking her if she was all right. She didn’t answer. How could he marry her when she was acting this way, not even looking at him? He must have been crazy, too. The glass had been made cool by the rain now, and she pressed her face against it, closing her eyes against a world that was all shrouded in gray now, a place that held no magic at all.

  EASTER HAD NOT been so hurt since losing her own child. When Anneth called her from Harlan to let her know that she had run off to marry Glenn Couch, Easter hadn’t even been able to say anything, and Anneth hadn’t given her much of a chance.

  “Bradley’s never coming back, I’ve told you,” Anneth said that morning. Easter could hear cars passing in the background and knew that Anneth was standing on the street talking into a pay phone. She could also hear a hollowness in her sister’s voice, the sound of defeat. “And Glenn understands everything. He knows I’m going to give you the baby, that everything will come together just fine.”

  Easter wanted to say, You’ve lost your mind, Anneth. Please come home right now. Don’t do this. Don’t marry that man. But she couldn’t. She wasn’t able to say a word, something that would haunt her forever; even on her deathbed she would recall this morning when her sister made the biggest mistake of her life.

  “Now, I know you think I’m crazy, Easter,” Anneth said, “but this is the right thing. It’s what I have to do right now. I’ve laid and cried for the past nine months and I have to get through this. If I don’t do something, I’ll crack up.”

  Easter listened to the distance between them. You’ll leave yourself behind in Harlan, she thought. Easter wasn’t even sure why she was so dead-set against G
lenn. Maybe he could change. But Easter knew he wouldn’t. She knew this was a mistake and there was no explaining that. She just knew.

  “Please, Easter.” Anneth was crying now. She had never begged Easter for anything, but now she was. “Say something.”

  But she couldn’t. Easter put the phone back on its cradle and sat there, hugging herself against the realization that her sister had finally turned herself over to that big sadness she had carried around with her all her life. She had lost her mind, running off with somebody like Glenn Couch. He was just like Matthew—crazy over her—but unlike Matthew he was a fool. Easter could see in his eyes that he was the sort of man who thought he could make Anneth love him. Didn’t he know that nobody could make Anneth do anything?

  And suddenly she knew that Anneth’s offer to give her the baby was a decision based on the same thoughtless logic. There was nothing she could do now. Anneth and Glenn were probably already in the office of the justice of the peace, saying their vows, a man half-crazy with lust for a woman he could never have gotten if she were in her right mind, and a woman whose belly showed that she was ready to have a child at any moment. Easter feared her sister would never make it back home before going into labor.

  Easter tried to pray. But once she found herself on her knees beside her bed, her mind drew a blank. She didn’t know what it was she intended to pray for, because it seemed that everything was done now. There was no turning back.

  Thirty-four

  These Sacrifices

  EASTER STOOD LIKE a scarecrow in the garden and watched the birds settle on the branches around her. There were dozens of them—perhaps a hundred. All redbirds, birds that never traveled in groups this big. They fluttered down like drops of blood to settle on the tree limbs and perched there to watch her. She stood very still, afraid that any sudden movement might scare them away. Somehow she wanted their presence here with her, but they unsettled her, too, the way they sat staring down at her.