Under a Cloudless Sky

by Chris Fabry

  The young woman at the front desk sat clicking through TV channels and cracking gum. Her name tag read Summer. Frances first asked if there was a Ruby Freeman staying at the hotel, then added the Handley just in case.

  Summer punched the down arrow on a grimy keyboard and squinted at an amber computer screen and shook her head. “We got one room left tonight, but it’s only for one night. Tomorrow we’re booked up.”

  “I’ll take it,” Frances said.

  She got the room for seventy-nine dollars and found two double beds with aged, flowery bedspreads worn thin. She wondered who else had wandered through the hills and found this town and this room. What tired bodies had chosen Beulah Mountain, West Virginia, as their resting place for the night? Did they have family in the hills? Were they here for a wedding, a funeral, a county fair?

  She leaned her small suitcase against the wall and called Jerry for an update. His wife answered.

  “Laurie, have you heard anything about my mother?” Frances said.

  The woman didn’t speak. There was just a noise on the phone like the cord was being stretched too far and then Jerry’s voice came on the line.

  “We haven’t heard anything more, Frances. Where are you?”

  She told him and asked him to call if there was any news.

  “Did Wallace go home?” Jerry said.

  “He left just before I did.”

  “Weird having him here again, wasn’t it? Sort of felt like old times.”

  “Mm-hmm. He was a big help. It was kind of him to drive up.”

  “He was right about everything. You know, all the police stuff. Glad he was there.”

  Frances recalled her suspicion of Jerry, and though it still felt far-fetched, she entertained the possibility again. Whatever he said, he sounded glad Wallace was gone.

  “Do you think you two will get back together?” Jerry said.

  Frances laughed, not at the question or at Jerry’s naiveté, but at the absurdity of life. “I think he’s moved on.”

  “Well, for the record, I think you two made a good couple.”

  It was the kindest thing she had ever heard her brother say and it caught her by surprise.

  “If you hadn’t gotten together, there would never have been a Julia. I’d say she was worth the pain and heartache, don’t you think?”

  “I do. You’re right.”

  He paused and instead of filling in the gaps for him, she stayed silent.

  “I’ve been thinking of all the nights Mom waited up for me. You too, probably. She waited in the parking lot at school for football practice to end. She spent half her adult life waiting. And now we’re doing the same.”

  “Waiting and not knowing is the hardest combination.”

  “You got that right, Sis.”

  “I’ll let you know if I find out anything here,” she said.

  Frances slept a few hours, waking and checking her phone to see if she had missed a call. She ate breakfast in the dining area the next morning. Tepid coffee and toast and cereal and hard-boiled eggs. The rain had subsided, though droplets still fell from leaves to the ground like manna, and the birds were out and singing with the rush of creeks. There was a hint of the sun but it had yet to peek over the top of the mountain.

  She checked out and dialed Charlotte Beasley’s number, getting voice mail and leaving a message. At the front desk “Summer” had given way to “Fred” and she asked him about the Company Store Museum. The man pointed and said it was walking distance.

  Brick buildings stood empty with plywood fastened over windows. Sidewalks heaved from encroaching tree roots. A shuttered gas station stood on the corner of two main streets with bars over the windows and empty holes in concrete, the ghosts of gas pumps. Some businesses were open, however, like the ice cream shop that advertised a banana split sale. A sign at a hair salon read Support Coal.

  Railroad tracks ran through the town along a narrow corridor of old homes, a few of which had been refurbished to look like they had in the days when coal had flown from the mountains like flocks of swallows. Frances came upon a weathered metal sign that stood near the tracks.

  On the second of October, 1933, the Beulah Mountain Massacre occurred. Seven people lost their lives at the company store and directly outside. Among them were the owners of the mine, Thaddeus Coleman and Jacob Handley. The perpetrator, Judson Dingess, was shot dead by Sheriff Kirby Banning on the street outside the store.

  She looked past the sign, across a wide expanse of road, and saw the Company Store Museum. The structure was built on a stone foundation and concrete stairs led up to the front entrance. The wooden siding had been replaced by white aluminum, and the many gables showed the intricacy of the building’s design. She counted a dozen windows from where she was standing, and she assumed there were more she couldn’t see. The building looked like it had stepped off the pages of history.

  Walking closer to get a different view, she stood by a railing and took in the smell of the wet earth and the rising humidity. She could close her eyes and hear the train whistle and smell the coal dust and the beasts of burden. She could see the blackened faces of the miners walking with their lunch pails. She smelled the woodsmoke burning for dinners and water heated for baths for husbands returning sweaty and grime-laden.

  Her phone rang. Charlotte.

  “I’m standing here at the Company Store,” Frances said. “This is amazing.”

  “I’ll be right out,” Charlotte said.

  The front door opened and a girl in her early twenties exited wearing jeans and a blue T-shirt with the Company Store logo. She had short brown hair that bounced as she bounded down the stairs and across a gravel walkway with ropes on either side. The store evidently expected a crowd.

  “Have you heard anything from your mother?” Charlotte said, shaking hands.

  “I was going to ask you the same thing,” Frances said. “I was hoping I would pull up to the hotel and see her car, find her checked in, and knock on her door. I guess that’s not going to happen.” She filled her in on what she knew and Charlotte’s face grew concerned.

  “Well, we’ve got our eyes peeled. I feel so bad now, about bothering her. I was just looking for answers.”

  “Answers about what? You mentioned on the phone you’ve been doing research.”

  “Did you know this was your mother’s home after your grandmother died?” Charlotte said.

  “I heard that, but I don’t know much more.”

  “Come on. Let me give you the pre–ribbon-cutting tour.”

  27

  HOLLIS AND JUNIPER HAVE A TALK AT BREAKFAST

  BEULAH MOUNTAIN, WEST VIRGINIA

  FRIDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2004

  The rain had awakened Hollis several times in the night. Their roof had been repaired two summers ago, so he didn’t worry about leaks, but when lightning struck close, it sounded like a TNT blast and he sat bolt upright. The flash came from the top of the hill and he hoped the lightning hadn’t hit the big poplar by his parents’ graves. That tree had grown up and out over the grassy knoll and provided shade, and Hollis loved to sit under it and think of those who had come before him. And the one who had come after.

  His father had walked him through the woods when he was a child, pointing out each flower and fern and tree and where to look for ginseng and how to identify poison ivy. Most people couldn’t tell the difference between a pine and an oak and he thought that was a shame. Lying back on the bed, he thought of all the pleasure that tree had brought just by growing where it had been planted. And he wondered if there wasn’t a lesson there for people to do what they were made to do and leave the rest alone. There wasn’t a soul on earth who would miss that tree like he would.

  Hollis was usually up first, but when he pulled his head from the pillow, he saw Juniper’s empty dent in the mattress and heard her stirring in the kitchen. He pushed the hair out of his eyes and threw a leg over the side of the bed. When he rose up, the bones cracked in his shoulder and somewhe
re in his knee. His body was a symphony, and the stomach growl was part of the percussion section.

  He stood and felt a deeper ache than usual, connecting the extra humidity of the rainfall with the pain in his muscles and joints. Every time it rained, there was a new level of ache and if this was as bad as it got, he could take it. But of course, he knew this was not as bad as it got. It would get worse, especially for Juniper, and that meant it would get worse for him, too. Life had become a downhill race that no one had entered voluntarily. Everyone had a spot in line and a number pinned to their back and a finish line out of sight around the bend.

  As a young man, Hollis had been terrified of death. That fear had drawn him to God. He believed there was something better on the other side, and getting there was inevitable. He could measure his days past and weigh them with those unnumbered ones in the future and be at peace with the equation. Now, death didn’t scare him half as much as life. Death led to streets of gold and people he loved. Peace. Rest. But he couldn’t for the life of him figure out where living led.

  He found Juniper at the stove making bacon and eggs. He hadn’t seen her up this early in some time and wanted to ask if she felt better but decided against it. The skillet was one his mother used, heavy and black, and he wondered how Juniper had lifted it from the drawer underneath the stove.

  “Smells good,” he said.

  “It’s supposed to.”

  “I guess you’re right.”

  “Coffee’s ready,” she said.

  He poured himself a cup and drank it black. The heat bit going down his throat.

  “That was some storm last night, wasn’t it?” Juniper said.

  “Gully washer.”

  “Lightning hit close.”

  “You jumped when it did.”

  “Did not.”

  “Felt like it. You kind of kicked me.”

  “I should have kicked you a long time ago.” She kept her back to him but he could sense the smile on her face.

  “Probably should have. Probably should have picked up a hammer while you were at it.”

  “Think it hit the poplar?” she said.

  “I’ll check.”

  He put his feet in his shoes without tying them and walked out on the front step with the mug in his hand and his laces flopping and craned his neck to look at the hill above the house, preparing himself for the worst. But there it stood, keeping watch over the flock of close kin and distant relatives and friends from the town who were buried underneath. It gave him a warm feeling to see it, like an old dog that had run away loping back up the road.

  He scanned the tree line down the hill but saw nothing unusual. It wasn’t until he stepped into the mud at the side of the house that he saw the damage.

  “Big walnut out back,” he said when he returned to the kitchen and slipped off his shoes. “We’ll need to cut it so the rest of it doesn’t fall on the shed.”

  “And when will you do that?” Juniper said.

  “I’ll get around to it. I’m just glad it wasn’t the poplar.”

  He sat and she scraped the eggs from the skillet onto a plate and brought it to the table. He watched her move to the refrigerator for butter and then to the toaster. It was like watching a movie where the people age before your eyes because in his mind he could see her younger, standing tall and beautiful. He blinked and there she was with gray hair and sagging breasts and wrinkles. It was all he could do not to get up and help, but she seemed to want to do it herself and he sensed he should sit still. The conflict with Coleman and the town had caused an underlying chill between Hollis and his wife, and he wondered if eggs and bacon was her way of thawing the ground between them.

  Juniper sat and put her fork into the yolk of her fried egg, and yellow leaked onto her plate. Then, out of nowhere, as if it were something she had planned all along, she said, “What are you going to do when I’m gone?”

  He stared at her. “Where you headed?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “If you leave, I’m going with you.”

  She smiled. “You’re a rascal. Answer the question, Hollis.”

  He put some jam on his toast and bit into it, wiping the crumbs from his lips onto his lap. “What makes you think you’re leaving first?”

  “I swear, Hollis, you have to look at what is instead of what you want.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You see the world through different eyes. You see it as you want it to be. You look at me and you see the woman you married, not what I’ve become.”

  “You haven’t become anybody but who you always were. That’s what I see.”

  “You don’t see reality, Hollis. And you need to start.”

  He chewed on his breakfast, sensing he ought to be quiet instead of fight her.

  “Your good intentions are getting in your way.”

  “What intentions are those?”

  “You have a good heart. You want to do the right thing. You always have. But both of us know you’re never going to cut down that walnut tree. Because you see it as it was before the lightning struck. Something will happen and you’ll put it off. There’ll be some other thing that’s bigger and more pressing and you’ll fight that battle. Until one day a strong wind will come along and that tree will smash the shed and you’ll call it God’s will. That’s the way it happens with you. If there’s not some emergency, not some crisis that gets you to move, not some tree crashing down, you’ll let it go. You sprain your ankle and it swells up like a gourd and you wait. Might be broken. Might not. You act like the ‘might not’ always trumps the ‘might.’”

  He swallowed the toast and thought a minute. “I’ll call Larry and get him over here with his chain saw. Is that what you want?”

  She put down her fork with a clatter. “This is not about the tree or Larry coming with a chain saw. You’re not getting it.”

  “Then help me understand. I’m listening.”

  “This is about you seeing the truth about the situation we got here.”

  “And what’s the truth, Juniper? Spell it out.”

  “The truth is, we’re on a piece of property that could set the two of us and your granddaughter up for the rest of our lives. You could sell this and we could buy something and live out the little time we have left together without listening to the dynamite and diesel trucks and bulldozers. They’ll come and go like bees to a hive. I don’t know how much longer I got and neither do you. I think you hanging on to this place is something you’re doing for your mama and daddy. And you don’t need to any longer. You need to think of yourself. And me. And the rest of the family.”

  The eggs and bacon didn’t look as appetizing as when he sat down. Hollis put down his fork and pushed the plate away. “I wish the lightning had gotten the poplar now. It would have made it easier to leave.”

  Juniper picked up the medicine bottle at the middle of the table and tried to open it but couldn’t. He unscrewed the cap for her like he always did and put the pill in front of her and then the three others she took each morning. She washed them down with orange juice he had bought at the Family Dollar.

  “I’m asking you to do this for me,” she said. “And I know it’s not fair to ask.”

  “It doesn’t matter whether it’s fair or not—”

  “It does to me,” she said. “I know this is the end of a load you can’t lift alone. And it feels like it’s going to kill you to get under it. You’ve fought a good fight. But in my mind, this is not about winning or losing some battle with Buddy Coleman. This is about you and me. It’s about our family. It’s about choosing whether to live or not.”

  Hollis thought of the verse in the Gospel of John where Jesus said he came to bring life and life abundant. He thought he had that life, but maybe it was an illusion. Maybe the whole mountain wasn’t real.

  “Did you butter me up with breakfast for this speech?”

  She almost smiled. “Took every ounce of strength I had to lift that skille
t.”

  He pulled the plate closer and resumed eating. When he was done with his eggs, he broke the bread and moved it around the plate to soak up the rest. As he did, he saw his father’s hand at the end of his own arm. He put his silverware on the plate he knew he would wash himself and turned in his chair, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees.

  “You might be right,” he finally said.

  “Right about what?”

  “I feel obligated to them. They treated me like their own. You have to remind me that I wasn’t theirs because it always felt like I was. They gave me their name. Gave me everything they had. And they never asked a thing in return but to hang on to this mountain.”

  “They’ve been gone thirty years, Hollis.”

  “No, they haven’t been. They’re still here. Up on the hill.”

  “It’s not fair of them to ask this.”

  “Maybe it’s not, but you keep talking about seeing what is rather than what I want to see. Maybe you’re doing the same. You want them to release me from the promise I made. But I can’t change a vow.”

  “You’ve done all you could. You kept it as long as you could, and if they could step out of their graves right now, they’d walk down here and tell you to sell. Get off this mountain.”

  Hollis cleared his throat and coughed. He thought of their faces and their hardscrabble life. And how much joy they took in the little things. His parents could find good in sun and cloud alike.

  Finally he looked at Juniper, narrowing his gaze. He tried to remove the hurt from his voice, some of the feelings of betrayal, but some of it leaked through. “I can’t fight this alone. If you’re not with me, I’ll sell and move quick as a wink. If that’s what you want me to do, I’ll do it.”

  “Don’t you see, Hollis? This is not about me getting you to do what I want. This is about us being together. It’s about seeing that I’m for you and not against you.”