by Tawni O'Dell
He pulled up a chair, settled his bulk into it, and talked to them about their grandfathers and their dads and their uncles. How his own dad always said those boys up in Jolly Mount were the toughest, most dependable miners on God’s green earth. He used to say he’d give four of his Marvella miners for just one working Josephine.
He knew the old man watched the whole rescue from his seat up there in heaven. He may have even had something to do with them getting out alive. And you can be sure he was damn proud of them. Lesser men would have given up. Lesser men would have gone nuts.
Personally, he never doubted that they were going to come out of it alive, either. He understood them. They were cut from the same cloth. They were from the same place. They were in the same business, and they were proud of what they did. Outsiders didn’t always understand. Hell, he couldn’t tell them how many times he had to defend himself and his family to other rich people because the Jacks made their first fortune in coal. Like that made him dirty or something. Like money made from owning hotels or selling wrinkle cream was somehow superior. Money was money and he had enough to live anywhere he wanted to but he lived in Centresburg, PA, goddammit. This was his home, too.
I was visiting E.J. when I heard him coming down the hall to his room. I ran and hid in the john. I hadn’t seen Cam Jack in the flesh for over twenty years.
“You don’t sound too excited about it,” I tell E.J.
“Dusty and Lib and Ray all want to do it,” he answers, hoping I won’t notice that he’s avoiding telling me what he thinks about it. “Dusty’s desperate for the money since his restaurant went belly-up. He doesn’t care where the hell it comes from or why he’s getting it. Ray’s got a family. He needs the money too, plus he’ll go along with anything Lib says, and Lib says if a jury of our peers thinks we should have some of Cam Jack’s billions then why shouldn’t we?”
“He’s got a point,” I reply. “But I don’t get how this works. The investigation’s been over for almost a year now and J&P’s in the clear.”
E.J.’s pucker becomes more pucked.
“According to our lawyer,” he begins to explain, “the results of the investigation don’t matter in civil court. We don’t have to prove anything. All that matters is everybody knows what an asshole Cam Jack is. How bad his mines are. How many safety violations have been cited against him. How everybody knows the explosion in Beverly was his fault too, even though nobody could hang it on him. He says we don’t need any proof at all. All we need to do is get up on the stand and tell what it was like to be buried alive for four days. All we need is a sympathetic jury.”
I nod my understanding.
“I know your dad’s against it,” I add.
He smiles.
“He really got into it the other night with Lib. My dad said”—here he breaks into a perfect impression of Jimmy’s brogue—“‘You’re a grown man, Lib. No one put a gun to your head and chose your job for you. It was your choice, and every day you went to work you knew there was a chance you’d die. So I say it’s your fault. Sue your bloody self.’”
“And you agree with him?”
“All I know is miners don’t sue coal companies.”
“Why not? Everybody sues everybody nowadays. Why shouldn’t you?”
“Everybody’s looking to get something for nothing.”
“This wouldn’t be for nothing. The money would be for—”
“For what?” he interrupts me. “Waiting to die? How much is that worth in dollars?”
He gets up from his seat and heads to the fridge for another beer.
“I don’t want his money,” he says. “I work for my money. Plus I got enough money from the book deal and that idiotic TV movie.”
I know he’s sincere. I also know he wouldn’t get any personal satisfaction from beating Cam Jack in a courtroom. To a guy like E.J., there’s something innately cowardly about hiding behind checkbooks and lawyers and legalese. Beating Cam Jack on the ball field or in a game of pool would be appealing, but court means nothing to him.
He realizes a judge and jury can’t fix what he considers to be wrong with the man. His stinginess, his carelessness, his lack of appreciation for the company his dad gave him almost led to the destruction of the mine where E.J. worked. I think this bothers E.J. even more than the fact that he almost died. The threats to his physical well-being are a hazard of the profession that he accepted when he took the job, but the treatment of the mine and the equipment he can’t forgive. What kind of man doesn’t take care of his own stuff?
“What do you want?” I ask him.
I hear the refrigerator door slam behind me and the snap of a beer can being opened.
“I want my old life back.”
I glance around his garage. Anyone who didn’t know him the way I do would find his comment funny. The surface of his life now compared to his life before the accident is exactly the same. He has the same job. Lives in the same house. Goes to the same bar. He didn’t buy a new truck or a bigger TV or a better mower. He didn’t get a new wardrobe or a new philosophy on life or start eating new foods and drinking new beer.
He told me it would have been an affront to the life he had prayed so hard to keep if he changed anything about it after he was allowed to keep it. But something did change that was beyond his control. Something inside himself. I know the feeling. Survival is a great thing, but the knowledge of what you survived never goes away; you can’t escape from yourself.
“I think Shannon’s alive,” I blurt out.
“What?” he says and comes walking back to his lawn chair. “Are you serious?”
I nod. I can’t say anything more at first and E.J. doesn’t pry.
When I feel properly composed, I tell him all about Gerald Kozlowski.
He doesn’t say anything at first. He just stares at a grease stain on the cement floor.
“Have you told my mom?” is the first thing he asks.
“No. You’re the first one I’ve told.”
“You’ve got to tell her. Shannon was like her own kid. So were you.”
I know he’s right. Isabel took care of Shannon during the years before she was old enough for a full day of school. She quit her job teaching and sacrificed a second income that her own family could have used in order to babysit for the child of a man who never showed any gratitude. When I was a child myself, I simply regarded all of this as some more nice stuff these nice people felt compelled to do for us because of a combination of their niceness and our desperate situation.
It wasn’t until I became an adult and raised a child of my own that I understood the rareness and the enormity of their generosity, and how niceness had little to do with it. Isabel and Jimmy had been motivated by anger and outrage; they had been on a mission to save us.
But all of this aside, I don’t like E.J.’s tone. He’s lecturing me.
“What was I supposed to do? Quit school when I was six years old to stay home with my motherless baby sister? I didn’t have a choice. I watched her as soon as I got home. I took care of her at night and on weekends.”
“Stop it, Shae-Lynn,” he says roughly. “Everything in life isn’t a competition. I’m not saying you didn’t take care of your sister, and I’m not saying my mom took better care of her. I’m just saying my mom and dad should know about this.”
“I was planning on telling them when I know more. Nothing’s for sure yet.”
“What do you mean, nothing’s for sure? This lawyer from New York is looking for her in her hometown. He said he knows this is her hometown. That means he knows her. She’s alive.”
We both fall silent as we let this fact sink in.
“So what are you going to do?” he asks me.
“I don’t know. Maybe I should help him find her.”
“You sure you want to find her?”
“What kind of question is that?”
He gets up from his chair and starts pacing.
“Personally, I’m pissed as hell at her.
My mom almost died from grief when she disappeared. So did you. Have you forgotten all that? What she put you through? What she put us all through? Here all along she’s been fine and she never tried to contact any of us. You’re gonna forgive all that?”
“We don’t know she’s been fine,” I tell him. “We don’t even know she left on her own. Maybe she was abducted.”
“Abducted? In Jolly Mount? And then I suppose she was taken away and tortured and brainwashed?”
“It happens.”
“It’s been eighteen years. She never tried to contact you once. You’re telling me she was tortured and brainwashed for eighteen years?”
He stops in front of me.
“How does this guy know her?”
“I didn’t ask him. I was too shocked. I couldn’t think straight.”
“And you didn’t tell him you’re her sister and she’s been gone all these years?”
“No. I didn’t want him to know I knew her. I don’t know why. It was a feeling I had. I don’t trust him. I’m not sure I want him to find her. I’m not sure it would be good for her if he did.”
I stand up, too. Talking is not helping. It’s making me feel worse. He’s bringing up too many things I don’t want to think about.
“I’ll get more information out of him later when I see him again tonight,” I tell E.J.
“You’re seeing him tonight? You planning to screw it out of him?”
I take a step closer until the tips of my breasts are almost brushing against his chest.
“Don’t start on me. You’re one to talk. You’re the biggest slut I know.”
“Men can’t be sluts.”
“Then you’re a pig.”
“I’m a stud.”
“You’re an ass.
“It’s a disgusting double standard,” I think to add.
He smiles and takes a swallow of beer.
“It’s a great double standard.”
We’re almost touching. A few inches more and I’d be able to feel the hard denim of his fly push against my belly. The thought makes me think back to when I was first starting to want him. We were still kids and the sight of the newly developing muscles in his arms and back when he’d go shirtless became so magnetic to me that I found myself looking for any opportunity to brush up against him without knowing exactly why, only that any physical contact with him sent a thrill through my body that would lodge between my legs and make me want to get back on my bike, clamp the banana seat tightly between my thighs, and ride down a particularly bumpy hill.
The feeling wasn’t mutual, though. At around the same time, he started hanging out less and less with me. He stopped talking to me at school. Eventually, he was never home when I called or stopped by his house.
I couldn’t figure out what had happened. The only explanation I could come up with was to blame my breasts. The equation appeared fairly straightforward: We were best friends, then I got breasts, then we weren’t friends anymore.
It wasn’t that he wasn’t interested in breasts. He was definitely interested. Just not in mine.
I used to sit in the bathtub, crying, trying to scrub them off with a washcloth until my skin was almost raw.
I know it didn’t make sense. I should have been happy. I had a great figure; I was suddenly pretty, something all girls were supposed to want. But the way I saw it the only thing my new body did was attract a lot of attention from guys I didn’t like and cause me to lose the one guy I did.
My cell phone rings.
I pull it out of my pocket and walk away from him.
“Jolly Mount Cab,” I answer.
“Hi, Mom. I have a favor to ask. Actually, it’s more of a job. I think I can trust you with it.”
“Hi, honey. I’m fine. No broken bones. No missing teeth. Thanks for asking.”
“Mom,” he sighs, “I know you started it. You can’t expect sympathy.”
“What’s the job?” I ask him.
“I need you to drive out to Pine Mills and help a woman change a flat tire. I’m not going to do it. It’s beneath me.”
“And it’s not beneath me?”
“You drive a cab. I’m an officer of the law.”
I love this kid. The things that come out of his mouth. When he was six, he wouldn’t eat pie a la mode because ice cream and pie were both desserts and he insisted that eating them at the same time would be a conflict of interests.
“Well, yes, of course. No one should expect an officer of the law to change a tire,” I reply, doing my best imitation of Inspector Clouseau so “law” comes out sounding like “loo.”
“It’s not my job. If she was a different kind of person I’d do it regardless, but I think it’s important to teach her some respect for the profession. She has a bit of an attitude.”
“What kind of attitude?”
“The kind that would lead someone to think having a flat tire merits a 911 call.”
“Why didn’t the operator tell her to get bent?”
“She was hysterical during the call and said there had been a fatality.”
“She lied and said someone was dead in order to get a cop to change her tire?” I ask incredulously.
“Someone is dead. A groundhog. She hit a groundhog.”
I can’t help laughing.
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
“No, I’m not. Fortunately, I was in the area so I got here fairly quickly and was able to radio back in time to keep the state police and the fire department from wasting their time coming out.”
“So why are you calling me? Why not Mack’s or some other garage?”
“I thought you could use the money.”
“I can charge her?”
“Charge her an arm and a leg.”
“You’re still thinking about health insurance, aren’t you?”
“Gotta go.”
I look back at E.J. He’s gazing out the open garage door.
The first time I saw him after the rescue was in the hospital corridor. He was wearing a hospital gown and slippers that looked as ridiculous on him as a circus tutu on a bear. His left arm was in a cast, and his left hand was bandaged.
He’d been bathed and shaved and given a haircut, but nothing could be done to get rid of the hollowness in his cheeks or the ghostly pale of his skin. His face was covered with dozens of tiny brown cuts and purple bruises that made him look like he had a strange rash or a bizarre batch of freckles.
He smelled of smoke and it was instantly obvious to me that he had snuck somewhere to have a cigarette and now he was heading back to his room. I couldn’t figure out how he had been able to do it with all the nurses checking on him constantly and all the reporters congregated at every exit.
He stared at me. His pupils were still dilated, and his shock and confusion over being alive were still evident in his eyes, making them appear wild and haunted one moment and as depthless and motionless as pools of night water the next.
He still gets that look sometimes. He has it right now.
He catches me watching him and picks up the first available object as a distraction, which happens to be the photos of his folks.
I always loved my own parents’ wedding photo. My mom looked ethereal in her white lace and gauze. Dad looked awkward and too big in his rented tux, but he wore the defiance of youth and the triumph of capturing a pretty girl better than anyone else I’ve ever seen.
I was around ten years old when I got up the nerve to ask him if I could have the picture when he died instead of him giving it to Shannon.
He gave me a suspicious, startled look. I knew it didn’t have anything to do with the photo. He just didn’t like me figuring out he wasn’t going to live forever.
Chapter Four
CLAY DIDN’T GIVE ME detailed directions to the damsel in distress, which meant he knew I wasn’t going to need them.
On the back roads between Jolly Mount and Pine Mills, one doesn’t encounter a brand-new, champagne-colored Lexus SUV with Connecti
cut plates very often. The owner is sitting in the front seat. She has set up three small neon orange hazard signs on the road that probably came with the vehicle in a fireproof, waterproof, wild animal–proof emergency kit along with a flashlight and some pepper spray.
I park my car far enough away from hers that she won’t get spooked. I leave my hat and sunglasses on the front seat.
I walk right up to the driver’s side window without her seeing me. She’s staring straight ahead and her lips are moving. At first I think she’s talking to herself or praying, then I realize she has one of those headsets that allows her to use her cell phone without using her hands.
I tap on the window and she almost jumps out of her skin.
I instinctively reach for my creds so I can flash my badge before remembering I don’t have one anymore.
I take a step back from the car and try to look as harmless as possible.
She gives me a hesitant smile and rolls down her window. Even from a distance, I can feel the blast of air-conditioning.
“Hi, there. Deputy Penrose gave me a call. Says you’re having some car trouble.”
I reach out my hand for her to shake.
“I’m Shae-Lynn.”
She looks at my hand for a moment. It’s hard for me to read her eyes because she’s wearing a jaunty white ball cap.
She finally takes my hand. Hers is beautiful. It reminds me of some of the hands of high-priced D.C. mistresses who passed through my security screenings on their way upstairs to visit their sugar daddies in the Capitol office buildings after hours.
The hands of the wives were always nice, too, but none of them had the satiny perfection of the girlfriends’. One of the reasons was age. Another was that most of the wives hadn’t always been pampered. They had struggled before their husbands were elected and their lifestyles were elevated. Their hands had changed some diapers and washed some dishes and done some gardening. Not so for the mistresses. These girls were in their twenties and had never done anything with their hands except jerk off other women’s husbands.