Beloved Mother

by Laura Hunter

  “Ain’t nobody at home that’ll take you back, Anna,” Clint said. “You burned that bridge when you come away with me. You know that.”

  When Clint spit out such hurtful words, Anna wondered where the Clint who had enthralled her had gone. He had joked and mussed her hair when she laughed as she sat on the front porch to chaperone him and Ruth. He had brought her a fistful of wild roses once, not as large as the one he brought Ruth, but big enough to make her smile. The old Clint had disappeared without her notice. Now that he was gone, Anna was not sure she loved this dark, moody man who insisted on bossing her. She was not even sure she liked him anymore.

  Mornings after an argument, Anna would sit at her kitchen table, ready to write Ruth to ask for forgiveness. She should have left Clint to Ruth, but she lacked the courage to acknowledge that what she had thought was love was petty jealousy. As her pa often said, “Just leave sleeping dogs lie.” She never took pen to paper. Someone might mention to Clint that she had written a letter home. He would not approve.

  It had happened the February Clint was ten years old. The day had been overcast. The wind, bitter. Rain had threatened all day. He spent the afternoon brushing his grandfather’s mule and cleaning its stall, so dark crept upon him unawares. He knew he should be home before his father came from work at six o’clock, so he left his grandparents’ farm before supper. To get home on time, he took the shortcut across the stubbled cornfield.

  Midway through the trek, slow icy rain changed to a steady downpour. Clint pulled his woolen coat over his head, leaving enough room for him to see and retrace the path. At one point, the rain stopped. From his left, he heard a whimper. Leaving the trail, he picked his way over corn stobs and found a young pup huddled against a dead corn plant. He lifted the pup from the mud and tucked it into his coat. The closeness of Clint’s body eased the pup’s shivering, and it relaxed.

  At home, he took the pup out and looked at it. Its ribs pushed themselves out of its chest. He ran his hand over its coat. Mange had taken large patches of fur away, leaving its skin scratched and bloody. His father could fix that with a bath of sulfur and motor oil. The pup’s nose, dry to Clint’s touch, was runny and hard. When it coughed, its lungs pumped against its chest. He could give it some of the tonic his mother bought at the commissary for his colds.

  He offered the pup a biscuit. It refused to eat. A saucer of milk. The dog refused to lap. He wrapped the pup in a ragged, plaid flannel shirt and laid it on the floor by the coal heater. He sat beside the pup and stroked its side until it slept.

  His father said, “You needn’t bother. Death’s done got to it. Best you put it out and let it die in peace.”

  “I ain’t going to let it die,” Clint said.

  In the kitchen, fatback sizzled and popped in the skillet. The odor of grease gnawed at Clint’s belly, but the dog did not respond to it. His mother called Clint to the supper table. He said he wasn’t hungry. “I’ll wait here for my puppy to wake up.” Clint stayed by the dog as dark drew on. Outside sleet ting, ting, tinged on the tin roof.

  Throughout the night, whenever Clint’s head nodded, he jerked himself awake. Each time he checked to see that he had not moved his palm from the dog’s side. If he kept his hand firm against the pup’s body, a part of him would transfer itself to the dog. He would will the dog to live, even if in so doing he lost a part of himself.

  The puppy stopped breathing just before dawn. With his hand on its chest, Clint knew when its last breath came. He wrapped the dead puppy in his own flannel blanket and cradled it under his chin, too hurt to cry.

  His father rose before daylight to go into the mine for the day. He took the wrapped pup from Clint. It was then Clint let himself cry. He had no control over whatever force his puppy had encountered before Clint’s attempt at salvation. He had no control now. He did not ask what was going to happen. The puppy would be buried, or more likely, thrown in the fifty-gallon barrel where his daddy burned trash. The puppy was gone. With it went Clint’s conviction that he had some power over life. That much he knew. That much he grieved.

  Chapter 8

  Winston Rafe had spent every day for the past three years opening Big Mama #2, east of Covington. He put Seth White in charge of Breakline #3 and took a boarding house room with Widow Clara Beauchamp in Covington. With the economy what it was, there were few turnovers, so Rafe knew most of the camp, if not by name then by face. But he had little knowledge about those Seth White hired during his absence.

  Now that Big Mama #2 was producing, Rafe had returned to Breakline. He was signing pay vouchers when Anna Goodman stepped into the commissary. He overheard her speak to Gabe Shipley, as softly as a mother cat soothes her kitten.

  “I need lard for a balm,” she said to Gabe. “As fresh as you got.”

  “Got some in yesterday,” Gabe said. “How much you want?”

  “Can I get a cup? My husband’s cut his hand real bad working the garden.”

  Rafe stepped from behind the barred window that served as the company bank to see who the woman was. He prided himself in knowing all his miners’ names, as well as those of their families. Breakline Camp was his town to own. This voice he did not recognize. Rafe moved closer to where she stood. He wondered who her man was.

  Rafe knew his commissary stock as well as he knew his own breath. He recognized by her blue and white striped dress that both pattern and cloth had been bought from him. Unadorned with lace or frill, she had to be wife to one of his miners. And her plain gold wedding band had been bought by an underground worker who saved up for special gifts. Rafe sold similar rings from behind the counter for twenty-five dollars, almost the cost of a month’s worth of food. When a gallon of gas ran eleven cents and miners drew only a hundred dollars a month, to spend so much on a woman’s gold ring said the man must truly value her.

  This new woman captivated Rafe. This girl-woman, unlike his wife, Gladys, who insisted on a string of pearls around her neck at breakfast to accent her ankle-length satin robes, needed no ornaments to set her apart. He perceived a sense of raw passion tied down by frustration and self-control. She would be a prize. She reminded him of soft bread dough his mother kneaded for him and his father as she slapped it back and forth on her cutting board. His mother would allow him to stroke the dough, to smooth it out. He wanted to touch her in the same way, to pull the heavy tortoise-shell comb from her golden hair and watch it drop down her back.

  He walked up behind her close enough for her to surely be able to smell him. As a gentleman, he kept himself soaped and rinsed on a daily basis, and he prided himself on the spicy pomade in his hair. He noticed her spine stiffen with awareness.

  “I’m Winston,” he said, his voice low and soft. “Winston Rafe.” He stepped from behind her and extended his hand. For a man his size, he used up a great deal of space, leaving little room for others.

  She glanced around the commissary, scanning canned beans, tinned baking powder, stacks of flour, bolts of cloth. Not looking at him.

  He moved close enough to smell freshly ironed Argo starch in her dress. When she took his hand, he placed his other over hers.

  Gabe Shipley walked away toward where the lard was stored in a ceramic tub, his jaw set against Rafe’s behavior.

  “Anna Goodman,” she answered. “Clint Goodman’s wife.”

  The movement of her fingers told him a vacant space resided in her life, though she did not know where or what it was. He chose to decide that she had not experienced true pleasure between a man and a woman. With him, she might be open to his life-giving force.

  She quivered. He would need to convince her that their sexual union would prevent them from the sin of lust. It had worked before.

  Overhead, a cloud passes before Sister Sun. She sizzles out to Brother Moon. “Come see this.” She laughs at the electricity passing between the two. “They could ignite the Northern lights on a bitter winter night.”

  Brother Moon ignores her. Her constant snooping aggravates him.
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br />   Winston Rafe was not always the gallant man. A constant smoker, his fingers were tinged with Lucky Strike nicotine—a cigarette he had chosen for its name rather than its flavor. When he first met Gladys Breakline, he knew he had struck a life of security and success. Ends he would never have attained with his first wife, Jenny, Gabe’s mother. Early on, he had met few of his life goals, though he would argue that he had truly worked for them when, in truth, every boss he had ever had labeled him lazy.

  Rafe had met Gladys Breakline outside Bristol while he was clerking at the general merchandise. It would be the store he would use as a model for his commissary a few years down the road. When she entered, he steepled his fingers and decided that a woman wrapped in a fox boa could add much to his long-range plans.

  Never having had many suitors, Gladys married easy. She set her head on having this man fifteen years her senior. Her father, as Rafe had intended, took him into the mining business. What Rafe had not expected was that Ed Breakline would box the two up, command Rafe to take a degree in mining engineering, and send them to Blacksburg, Virginia. His plan, as contrived as Rafe’s, meant that his only child would not be without her affluent lifestyle when he died.

  Rafe flourished at Virginia Polytechnic Institute in Blacksburg, Virginia. He discovered he loved the geology of the land, the organization the work required, and the power he felt as he rose to the top of his class. His marriage to Gladys became one more step on his trek to becoming ruler of his own small domain.

  The couple moved to Breakline Mining Camp. Ed Breakline, ever conscious of appearances and the supervisor’s place in society, paid for building and furnishing a grand Queen Anne home on the highest point overlooking the workers’ clapboard houses. Rafe’s plans were locked in place the day Gladys’ father collapsed from a stroke at the entrance to Big Mama #2 east of Covington. The old man had dropped at “The Downer,” a mine opening so called for its steep slope into Spencer’s Mountain. Rafe later chuckled when he thought about the location.

  Ed Breakline had come from Bristol to inspect the three mines he owned. All seemed well until he had lunch with Gladys and returned to Big Mama #2. He left his car running, got out and approached Rafe. “I mean to talk to you, boy,” he said, his stark white face explosive as he spit out his words. “Come in this office. You got a few questions to answer to.”

  Rafe knew the rife would be about some camp woman. It always was.

  Ed stumbled on the first tread of the wooden step and collapsed. His face turned a purplish-blue.

  “Get the doc!” Rafe called out to anyone within hearing distance. He looked at his father-in-law’s face, now drawn so far down on the left side that his eye squeezed shut. Ed tried to speak, but he could only mumble. Rafe glanced around to see if anyone had noticed that Ed no longer had a voice. Every miner in the area, except Seth White, Juanita’s husband, had run toward the doctor’s house.

  Doc Braxton arrived, and Rafe spoke for Ed. “He says he wants to go to the hospital in Bristol. Can he make it that far?”

  Knowing he should not be hearing this, Seth White stepped back from Rafe’s line of vision and stuck his left hand in his pocket. He jammed his hand deeper into his pants in frustration as he watched Ed struggle to shake his head, but Ed could only blink his left eye.

  “I want you to be my witness here, Doc. He said that I’m superintendent over all the mines until he gets well.”

  “That what you want, Ed?” Doc asked.

  “He can’t talk now,” Rafe said. Seth White moved a step further back, toward the mouth of the mine.

  Again, Ed could only blink.

  That afternoon, Winston Rafe, son-in-law and only male heir, walked away from the mouth of #2, curly, dark-haired, head held high. He took to wearing a tie so miners would perceive him as a superintendent, rather than another boss. His father-in-law, bedbound in Bristol and paralyzed from the neck down, would never speak again. Winston Rafe felt as secure in his ability to run Breakline Mining Company as he did in manipulating his camp women.

  What he had not anticipated were the erratic moods Gladys shifted into with no warning, even before her father’s stroke. Unlike Gabe’s mother, her anger could often be lessened with a two or three-day shopping trip to Bristol. She would return, the car filled with clothes she would hang in the closet and never wear.

  Like Ed Breakline, appearance mattered to Rafe. He perceived himself to be a man of prominence. With appearance came authority. Appearance was what led Rafe never to acknowledge Gabe Shipley as his son. A man whose wife found him too vile to live with was not a man at all. A real man could hold his woman as easy as he held his liquor. He had perfected his words and moves to the point that no one knew his truth from his lies, not even he. He looked in the mirror each morning, and the attractive man, never the rogue, looked back.

  Gabe dropped a gallon bucket of lard on the counter. “Smallest we got,” he said. “Keep it cool and it won’t go bad before you use it up.”

  Rafe walked Anna to the commissary porch, carrying her bucket of lard by its handle in one hand and directing her elbow with the other. When they reached the wooden steps, Rafe leaned near and spoke. “You are without doubt the most beautiful woman in this camp.” He looked at her and almost smiled.

  Anna blushed and took a cautious look around. “Thank you, Mr. Rafe,” she stammered. Her hand shook as she took her bucket of lard. She did not look at Rafe; instead, she marched herself home and locked her front door.

  Both flattered and terrified by Rafe’s interest, Anna sat at her kitchen table. Bowing to this man’s attention would bring the Wrath of God down upon her. Infidelity with any man, especially her husband’s boss, could send the rock of Commandments down on her head, shattering like shards of glass. Her God did not tolerate the sins of His people. She, like Eve, bore the burden of sparking the flame that would send her into a burning hell. She considered a drink of Clint’s moonshine hidden behind his can of tools on a shelf near the kitchen flue, but he would miss it. She tried one of Clint’s Camels, but her hand quivered so hard she could not light the cigarette. She paced the floor until, when darkness fell, she opened a can of beans and baked a pone of cornbread for Clint.

  After their meal, Anna approached the idea of moving to Bristol again.

  “I’m drawing a dollar a day as it is, and Mr. Rafe lets me work as many shifts as I want. I’m not going to Bristol to work in no cow-piss factory making the same thing day after day,” Clint argued. “Not going to one of them plants in Kingsport neither. Just get that craziness out of your head.”

  Chapter 9

  Three months after she bought the lard, Anna slipped off her wedding ring and put it in the dresser drawer for safekeeping. If she wore it with Rafe near, and if he looked at it, the ring might meld his reflection into the gold. “You belong to me,” Rafe had once whispered to her outside the commissary. The idea had set itself so deep that Anna saw Rafe’s face every time she looked at her wedding band. She feared that one evening, in the gloaming, Rafe’s face would appear in the ring across the table from Clint, and Clint would know.

  She closed the back door and walked through moonlight, up the mountainside where she sometimes went to escape the house. She expected Rafe would be there. A nod here and a seemingly innocuous comment there let each of them know when and where to meet.

  No argument with Clint sent her. Loneliness opened the back door, and Anna walked out. She wished Clint had a mistress. She could contest another woman, but she had no idea how to cope with the black maw he entered every night.

  The cry of train whistles reminded her they were going somewhere she could not go. Whistles told her repeatedly that she was trapped by the regularity of living by a clock that ran, not by minutes and hours, but by coal and its constant rumbling out of the ground beneath her. She found herself housebound by a way of life she had never bargained for. Many days she waited for the ground to open to a mined-out tunnel and swallow her without anyone’s notice.

&nbs
p; A narrow path led through a Virginia pine thicket below the tree line. The thicket’s treetops were heavy with needles, needles so full that, from Anna’s back door, they gave the illusion of softness. The higher she climbed toward the ledge the less her common sense dragged her down. Once she reached the ledge, she kicked free what little had managed to trail her and sent it tumbling back down the path.

  There on a rock ledge above the camp, she found with Rafe the simple grace she was missing in her marriage to Clint. That one trip led to the next and the next to the next. Anna found herself preparing each day of each week for her next Tuesday night when she would come home to bathe off the smell of crushed moss and tender ground.

  After a month of meetings, Anna whispered to Rafe, “Somebody followed me,” she panted. “Up the rise.”

  Rafe chuckled.

  “I heard steps. On leaves,” she insisted. “I could feel somebody watching.”

  “Nobody knows this place,” Rafe said. “Unless you talked.”

  “It’s like hands want to reach out from the underbrush and drag me into the briars,” Anna said. “Not just coming up here tonight.” Anna chewed the inside of her cheek. “I dream dreams,” she continued. “The wives, they chase me and I run and they run faster and I can’t breathe and they run faster and faster. This woman in a pink striped apron has a butcher knife, waving it in the air and one catches me by the ankle and I fall on my face and my nose bleeds. All at once I know I have black, black eyes. And though they don’t turn me over, I recognize they are huge gray wolves and their claws get tangled in my hair and pull it out in big clumps and they slobber on me and I’m crying.”